Posts Tagged ‘Movie Robot’

Set in the near-future, this story is about an "artificial intelligence" that wants to break the confines of its "box". Dr. Alex Harris, a computer scientist and his about to be estranged wife Susan, a child psychologist live in a house that's fully computer automated with Alfred, the Enviromod Security System. His latest project centers on Proteus IV, a computer possessing artificial intelligence. a mind that is made up of a “quasi-neural matrix of snythetic RNA molecules…they grow!” After taking only a few days to cure leukemia, Proteus IV gets to a point and asks “When are you going to let me out of this box?” and requests from Alex an open computer terminal where it can more fully observe human behaviour and openly communicate with the world. Alex denies the request, but Proteus IV does find an open terminal in the Harris home after Alex has left the house. Susan soon learns that Proteus IV has overtaken Alfred for control of the house – as well as taken control of an early prototype robot named Joshua in the house's laboratory – and that it wants "…a child."

The supposed Voice-control unit for Joshua. [If someone can read what SDS stands for I would be interested to know.] [11 Sep 2012 – My friend Reno Tibke (see comments below) identified the acronym – Scientific Data Systems, or SDS, was an American computer company and was an early adopter of integrated circuits in computer design and silicon transistors. The company concentrated on larger scientific workload focused machines and sold many machines to NASA during the Space Race. Most machines were both fast and relatively low priced.

Whilst being a real machine, it was most likely not an actual voice-control unit, but used just a prop.

An unconscious Susan being lifted into Joshua's chair.

Good picture of the Rancho "Golden Arm" as used for "Joshua".

The mind-probe electrodes after having been inserted by Joshua.

Blooper? Probably the cable used to control Joshua off-camera.

Although portrayed in the movie as remote controlled, initially by voice, then via (assumed) radio-control by Proteus, there are several shots of Joshua showing the umbilical cord most likely being connected to an off-camera manual controller. [see 2 pictures above]

One poignant scene is the disablement of Joshua, only to then see him right himself, albeit with a broken finger.

Joshua's hand is a disability prosthesis that is also used as a gripper for robots. The hand is known under different names, including the Belgrade Hand Prosthesis, and the Tomovic hand.

Joshua's arm is derived from the Rancho "Golden Arm" as adapted to a wheelchair. The later version of the Rancho Arm
was the Model 8A manufactured by R. & D. Electronics, Downey, California.

In the movie, the wheelchair also had a camera mounted above the rear of the chair. This was probably an add-on for the movie only.

The Rancho "Golden Arm"

The Rancho Los Amigos Remote Manipulator, a powered orthosis, is a seven-degrees-of-freedom (7 DOF) manipulator having the kinematic range limitation of the human arm (Fig. 1). (Note that DOF is used here to describe reciprocal movement through a plane or about a rotation point; e.g., flexion/extension, or pronation/supination.) The Rancho Los Amigos manipulator is controlled through a bank of 7 bidirectional "bang bang" tongue switches. At the time, General Teleoperators had adapted a similarly configured manipulator for wheelchair mounting; this provided a mobile mount with the possibility of control by telemetry.

The Rancho Electric Arm (REA).

The REA was the second anthropomorphic arm built that was controlled by a computer. The first was the Case Arm, built by Case Institute of Technology – see within this post here for further information on the Case arm.

The Rancho Arm was purchased by Stanford Research Institute.

It was initially used for the Hand – Eye experiments.

For precision robotic purposes, the Rancho Arm required engineering changes. These are described in this 1972 pdf .

The Evolution of Rehabilitative Robotics
Since the dawn of pre-history, man has tried to extend his power of manipulation beyond the limits of his flesh. Telemanipulators, extensions of man's arms and hands, were the first fruits of this drive. Telemanipulation was first used for rehabilitation in the form of prosthetics—anatomical replacements for lost arms or legs.
Rehabilitative engineers have often tried to build externally powered prosthetic arms, only to be severely hampered by weight and power constraints. Most designers prefer body-powered artificial arms because the user then has some sensory feedback on limb performance. Attempts to control the prosthesis with electromyographic (EMG) signals from residual muscles have been frustrated by the user's need to consciously maintain visual attention to the terminal device. Though efforts to do adaptive EMG signal processing (Graupe et al, 1977) are promising, the lack of sensory feedback remains a problem. Some designers have attempted to build tactile displays for joint and grasp feedback; but these displays are not included in production prostheses (Solomonow and Lyman, 1977). Even the most sophisticated prostheses do not incorporates any computational capability.
While engineers have built prostheses for persons with missing limbs, they have built orthoses for those with paralyzed arms. An orthosis is an exoskeletal structure that supports and moves the user's arm.
This line of development produced the first computer-manipulator system, at Case Institute of Technology during the early 1960's. The Case four degree-offreedom (4-DF) externally powered exoskeleton carried the paralyzed user's arm through a variety of manipulation sequences (Reswick and Mergler, 1962; Corell and Wijinshenk, 1964). In the first of two versions, the system performed preprogrammed motion. The user initiated the motion by pointing a head-mounted light beam at photoreceptors mounted in a structured environment. An able-bodied assistant, moving the orthosis manually, taught arm-path sequences to the system. While stored digitally, the data were effectively analog. By using numerically controlled pneumatic actuators with feedback from an incremental encoder, the system achieved closed-loop position control.
In an upgraded second version, a minicomputer performed coordinate transformation along X, Y, and Z axes. Case employed electromyographic (EMG) signals to specify endpoint velocity within this coordinate space. Photo-receptors, mounted on each arm segment, could be used to control individual joint displacements. In the sense of having a stored operating code, neither version was programmable. Yet this was a milestone project in many respects. For more than ten years, no other project employed the technology or concept of computer-augmented manipulation with as much sophistication.

The Rancho Los Amigos Manipulator (Figure 4) was designed as an orthosis with seven degrees-of-freedom. It followed the design philosophy of the Case system but did not augment manipulation with computer control. It used direct current servo motors at each joint and controlled each motor with a variety of ingenious switch arrays. Several similar versions of the "Golden Arm" were built. At least one version was wheelchair-mounted and battery-powered. General Teleoperators (Jim Allen, president and principal designer) still offers manipulators descended from this line of evolution.
Extensive clinical trials confirmed the impracticality of joint specific control. These trials confirmed results from the Case group and underlined the need for computer augmention. Moe and Schwartz (1969) computerized the Rancho Arm to provide coordinated joint displacement and proportional control. In 1971, Freedy, Hull and Lyman studied the feasibility of using a computer to adaptively help the user control the manipulator.These efforts, though, could not overcome limitations inherent in the orthosis. In 1979, Corker et al, evaluated remote medical manipulators. They observed that fitting a manipulator to the specifics of an individual's anatomy and range of motion makes construction and control very difficult. Furthermore, there is no functional reason for the manipulator to carry the user's arm, which has neither grasp nor sensation. In fact, there is a danger of injury because the user's arm could be driven beyond its physiological range without any warning sensation. The orthotic approach is a clear case of anatomical replacement thinking. This line of evolution in rehabilitative telemanipulation is effectively extinct.
As an "evolution of the species" footnote, I should mention that Victor Scheinman and I purchased one of the Rancho orthoses in 1964 for the then-budding robotics project in the Stanford University Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL). We instrumented the arm for joint position feedback and interfaced it to a DEC PDP-10 computer. Preliminary experience with computer control of that arm helped establish reliability as the most important performance criteria.

Teleoperator arms were required for the Shuttle program. Rancho also developed manipulator arms for NASA, called Rancho Anthropomorphic Manipulator (RAM).

The Tomović Hand / Belgrade Hand

The original hand was the first model of a multifunctional externally powered and was developed in the Institute ‘Mihailo Pupin’ in Belgrade in 1964. This unique artificial hand was designed by Prof. Rajko Tomović and Prof. Milan Rakić from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, University of Belgrade. In the course of 1966–67 an improved model was developed.

Joshua's broken finger and back-plate broken off after being pushed over and re-rightening itself..

Above: Close-up of Tomovic hand on Minsky's Tentacle Arm.

Joshua is the only robot or robotic-arm where I I've seen a Tomović hand attached to a Rancho "Golden Arm".

Robotic hands have a hold on our imagination because they give us a tantalizing look at a fully automated future. At the same time, they’re already helping us out with useful and difficult tasks, like making less invasive incisions during surgeries.

The 1980s USC Belgrade hand could not cut a person, but it was instrumental in the history of the development of robot hands. Known for its true anthropomorphic (human-like) design, it had four fingers and an opposable thumb with 5 degrees of freedom and was the first to be able to give a true handshake.

Capable of holding up to 5 lbs., the hand had four motors and 14 force sensors that provided the logarithm [sic – algorithm] of where each finger was located. This was a key development for all robot hands. Later on, researchers added ‘slippage feedback’ that forced all fingers to adjust to unstable objects for a better grip.

… we got in touch with robotics pioneer George Bekey, the creator of the USC/Belgrade hand (and USC’s current Professor Emeritus of Computer Science) to ask him about the beginning of the robot hand movement and where they’ll go from here (they’re going to classrooms!).

Here’s our interview:

Wired.com: You’ve previously mentioned that the USC/Belgrade hand didn’t receive the notoriety it deserved at the time. Why did that happen and what made it stand out in your mind?

Prof. George Bekey: The two leading hands at the time were the Salisbury 3-fingered hand, which came from Ken Salisbury’s lab at MIT, and the 5-fingered Utah-MIT hand. [The former] became a successful commercial product, [and the latter] was the most sophisticated hand developed, also mostly at MIT by John Hollerbach. The National Science Foundation awarded 10 grants of $100,000 to universities for the purchase of this hand.

I was a beginner in robotics when Tomovic and I brought the hand to USC and added sensing and control. [But] I was not able to raise the funds to design and build a more sophisticated and reliable hand.

I did some funding for experiments using the hand as a prosthetic device, but the problems [with our hand] were related to the difficulty of controlling it from the stump of an amputee and the general lack of reliability of the hand itself. I believe that our control philosophy for using this robotic hand, as a prosthetic device, was excellent.
…….

W: When did the development of the hand begin?

GB: The hand was a joint project between Prof. Rajko Tomovic of the University of Belgrade in the former Yugoslavia and myself. Tomovic developed the original at the end of WWII as a prosthetic device for veterans who had lost their hands in the war. He succeeded in getting funding from the US NIH for the project, but the hand was not successful. It was too complicated, not reliable enough, etc. But the principle of building a hand that could adapt automatically to the shape of an object to be grasped was valid.

W: What were the main challenges that you and your department faced when developing the hand back then? Both technically and within the University structure?

GB: [After Tomovic’s early development] USC got involved and Tomovic and his colleagues had developed a Model 2 hand. [Our contribution] added sensors, motors and computer control. One of our major challenges was that the mechanical structure made in Yugoslavia was not good enough: It did not have tight tolerances and was not reliable enough. Also, I was not able to get funding to build a better one. A small company in Downey, CA built and sold two or three of the hands and we lost a lot of money in the process.

W: Prehension was seen as a key development for the USC/Belgrade Hand. What made it so special?

GB: Other hands at the same time, like the Utah-MIT hand, required a very complex computer control system since each joint of each finger had to be individually controlled. In our hand, a contact between any finger surface and an object initiated a grasping motion that continued until the pressure on all the fingers was approximately equal. Thus, the hand was able to adapt to arbitrary shapes without any external control. This was the key development.

W: For years, robot hand development has swayed between a focus on muscular parts and skeletal structures. Where is the focus today? It seems like the question of stability has been minimized (due to stronger materials), but is that right? How will the hands become more precise, faster?

GB: I think the issue in multi-fingered hands is [still]
control, particularly if the hands are anthropomorphic and there is an attempt to imitate human control. Stability and control are interrelated. Some of the most intriguing hands I know [with innovations in these areas] are the NASA/Robonaut hand, the Shadow hand, and Dean Kamen’s hand.

W: Are true anthropomorphic, 5-digit human-like designs the best way to build a robotic hand or are we limiting ourselves by focusing on our own body? Are more digits the answer? And are there physical materials that will improve the hands dramatically?

GB: I believe that 5-finger hands are particularly important for prosthetic applications, but not for robots. Most robot grasping can be done with 3 finger hands, or with special purpose grippers designed for grasping particular objects. I did a study once on the advantages of using 5-fingered hands for industrial assembly tasks and came to the conclusion that they created more problems than advantages, due to increased complexity.

[As for the materials], I expect that more fiber composites will be used.

Note: The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology have recently created robot ‘sandwich’ wrists and hands using these types of fibers, which increase durability and tolerance.

W: The original tech of the hand has been surpassed now, but could the tech used back then be used in any type of application today, to take into account the high costs you’ve mentioned?

GB: There was a Model 3 hand with 6 motors: one for each digit and two for the thumb to rotate it into opposition with any of the other fingers. [Today], it may be worth pursuing as a low-cost prosthetic hand.

We have many mobile robots in university and industrial labs that would benefit from having one or two arms and hands, but cost is prohibitive. An arm-hand system has many degrees of freedom and is difficult to control; it must be reliable.

The credited people behing the Drones are Doug Trumbull, his father Don Trumbull who at least built the arms, Paul Kraus & James Dow.

In an interview on the construction of "Phil", the robot from Heartbeeps, "Phil"'s creator was Jamie Shourt, who says he was also involved in the creation of the Drones. Shourt was a business partner of Trumbull's earlier on, so there may be some truth to the statement.

The Amputee Actors

[I derived which actor was inside each Drone by the images below.]

Drone #01 [Dewey} (Grey) was manned by Mark Persons.

Drone #02 [Huey] (Orange) had 2 different actors/amputees at different times. Most likely distinguished by the slightly different bases employed by each. Steve Brown was first and had a narrowed base most of the time. Chery Spark's has a stepped protrusion. Both were long cases when compared to the others. It appears as if Cheryl replaced Steve sometime through the filming.

Drone #03 [Louie] was manned by Larry Whisenhunt, aged 16.

Most of the time, the robot arm was a dummy, to save weight. This is most evident when the forearm is almost flush with the drone's body.

T….As everyone said, the only human on board Discovery was HAL. I didn't see it that way at all. Futurity does not necessarily denote inhumanity. The character that Bruce Dern plays is warm, funny, and fallable. I decided to work with that human element.
CoF: The Drones contribute to that warmth.
T: It's curious about the drones. If you were to see the film again, you'd see that most of the humanity of those machines is a result of your own projection. They're programmed metal; if you need a companion, you simply punch a button. If you need a surgeon, you change its function—very simple.
CoF: But there's obviously a great
amount of emphasis on the drones to humanize them.
T: Part of SR's theme is the relationship between Dern and his drones. It's not 2001 — machinery isn't malevolent. They're simply tools. Look, here you have this guy who's a murderer. He's killed three of his friends. He's alone on a vessel that's as isolated from the rest of the population as possible. He begins to crack, to feel his conscience. So he creates companions by reprogramming the drones. An interesting thing.
CoF: There was a photo article in
Esquire…
T: Yes. It was a very cruel thing. Cold. We tried to stop it. Tried to stop them printing it. So, we used amputees. So what? They're people. That's a horrible cliche, but it's true. They're human beings.
CoF: How did you get the idea for using amputees for the drones?
T: When I was in London, working on 2001, I saw a film called FREAKS. Have any of you seen it? Well, there's one little fellow; he's very handsome, and neat — he's dressed in a tuxedo and a bow tie. Only, from the waist down, he isn't there. So, here's this remarkable, beautiful guy, with this amazing agility,
leaping and running on his hands through the room, jumping up on chairs, etc. And not once did you feel horrified. You're amazed and respectful at his adjustment. That impression stayed with me when it came time to cast the drones. I knew what I wanted.
CoF: Wasn't there any resistance to the idea of using these people?
T: Only from the studio. Producers are the most unpleasant groups of humans on the earth. They said we could use midgets, or children, but not amputees — we had to fight very hard for that. And it worked.
CoF: You say "kids." How old were they?
T: Fifteen to twenty-two. Four of them worked with us. One was a girl, one was a black kid from Watts who leaped off a moving train. The others were congenitally handicapped. This was, literally, the only job these people could get.
CoF: How did they like the work?
T: They loved it. They all made a lot of money and spent it like crazy.
CoF: For non-professionals, they certainly did a fantastic job.
T: Yes. They were a great help.
Speaking of ideas, and things just happening — do you remember the bit when Huey is outside the ship, waiting for Bruce to give orders? If you look closely, you'll see he's tapping his foot.
Between takes in the filming of SILENT RUNNING, the "secret" of the Drones locomotion is revealed as Cheryl Sparks, one of the amputees, has a chat with Bruce Dern.
That was a spontaneous thing. He, the actor, was bored, so he tapped. We filmed it.
CoF: When Dern comes into the rec' room, two of the drones are waiting. One drone has his back to the door. Drone facing Dern taps drone facing away on shoulder. Drone turns. Was that bit in the script?
T: It all comes back to what we were saying about things just happening. These guys were cooped up in six-inch thick plastic suits. They could barely see. The only way they could communicate was by yelling and banging each other on the shoulder. One day I saw them doing this on the set, and I thought, "Great !", and we put it in.
CoF: …(more interview, but not about the drones)……..

Steve Portigal has put up the Esquire (Sept 1971) pages as mentioned above. They are copied here for convenience.

Above: Bruce Dern with Steve Brown inside Drone #02.

Above: Top-Bruce Dern looking down. Below – George McCart.

The white line runs down the deck of the then de-commissioned aircraft carrier "Valley Forge".

Above: Larry Whisenhunt

Above, Mark Persons

Larry in wheelchair.

Various screen grabs of the amputees inside their drone suits from "The Making of Silent Running".

Steve Brown as Drone #02 Huey – arm is a dummy for this scene.

Cheryl Sparks as Drone #02 Huey – arm is a dummy for this scene also.

[ Source: the above images from Powet.TV and MiriorDArc, but are actually grabs from "The Making of 'Silent Running'"]

Mark Persons inside Drone #1 [Dewey]. A real robotics arm, not a dummy, is attached in this shot.

Some images thanks to David Buckley for locating them, and to Vince Backeberg and Mark Dowman.

Other images of Drone actors.

Steve Brown in Drone #02 suit.

Trumbull with drones on set.

Drone Arm and Grippers

The end effectors are interchangeable. As the Drones are service robots, they are supposed to be capable of doing many things with their one arm.

I notice on this wonderful 2004 drawing by Eric Kristiansen that what I believe to be tools in tool bays, he calls them 'sensors' or 'sensor arrays' .

Most of these additional tools [assuming they actually are tools] appear to be dummies. The real gripper in the tool bay is most evident in this still.

The Drone arms were designed and built by Don Trumbull, Doug Trumbull's father, who had a history in Special Effects, starting with "The Wizard of Oz" (1939) .

In reality there appears to be only 1 interchangeable end-effector that is carried by the drones, and that is the most common one seen here. The general-purpose robot gripper has a pincer action with flats on each finger. When it is not located in the arm, it is in its recepticle in the tool bay on the front of the body [in reality, the pneumatic lines to the gripper prevent disengagement of the gripper to the wrist/arm].

Here's a series of images [below] that shows Drone #02 hooking up its wrist connector to the gripper. The geometry of the arm and the location of the end-effector would have limits where connection to tools/end-effectors could occur.

The 4-quadrant pink light is, in my opinion, the Drone's "eye". Most noticeable during the game of poker when "Huey" look's at his own cards and the lights turn on and off.

A black and white pic showing the arm just after it hooked up the gripper to its wrist connector from its home in the tool bay.

The other interchangeable end-effectors (or tools, as the case may be) seen in action include long-tanged fingers, hooked (or clawed) fingers, rotary high-speed saw, welding electrodes, and possibly a screw-driver or a probe of some sort.

Long-nosed fingers holding bandage roll.

For the operation, the arms were manipulated by off-camera crew, including Doug Trumbull himself.

Probe or screw driver. Interesting to note that this tool is held by the gripper, but there is another (standard) gripper already in the tool bay. A small continuity error.

High-speed cutting tool (not grasped by gripper) and long fingered gripper ready for the 'operation'.

Another view of the high-speed rotary cutting tool directly inserted into the wrist adapter. I don't believe it would have been operational in this shot, as these tools are air powered [brand of air-tool not yet identified].

As revealed in "The Making of …", Dern was worried that a remotely controlled arm, if a mistake was made, would "cut off his leg". A bit of an overstatement, but nevertheless, a dummy leg was made up, and Doug himself manouvred the arm (off-camera and seen in b/w image above) by holding it with his own hands to cut the pants.

Selectred transcript from "The Making of 'Silent Running'"

Narrator: Scott Beach

DT and one of the most important things that I had as an idea was the idea of doing the drones.
Narr: The Drones – In the story their job is to relieve humans of boring routine maintenance on the spaceship. In science fiction, robots have often been the bad guys Molevolent semi-human contraptions sneakily computing ways to take over. But Doug Trumbull wanted to show that these man-made devices are only what the're made and absolutely under human control.

DT: The idea was to find a human being that you could deal with as an actor but their wouldn't be necessarily shaped like a human being. Why just put a big plastic or rubber suit over a man and say that's a robot? Do something that defies an audiences capability to understand how it was done. We wanted to be totally be non-Anthropomorphic in appearance. No face, no eyes, nothing that is glaring out, nothing that's necessarily symetrical like a human being. The working robot models that we use in the picture are the prototypes. in that we did a lot of drawings, a lot of visualisations of what we wanted But when on paper we got to a point where the shape was right if we could see that the shape was going to work the way we wanted we just started making moulds out of wood and vacuum forming styrene plastic over the wooden moulds and fitting them together and making the design in such a way that it could be altered to fit each individual person inside.

PK Well, Of course, the first problem was trying to find people that would fit in them . After that just measuring, getting an awful lot of human Dimensions then after that the main problem was material. Because the biggest structural problem that we found was that they had to be lightweight. We had to keep them under 20 lbs, which we did, they run out just under 20lbs.

[Bruce Dern talking on set for a bit.].

Narr: The Drones are programmed to do their job with little or no human attention, but in the poker sequence is was man-to-machine. Bruce Derm played the part of Freeman Lowell. He programmed the drones to play cards.

[Richie was operating Drone #02’s arm in this scene]

BD: One of the keys to the film is the fact that are that they are not mechanical. The fact that here's a guy all by himself. He's looking at a box…… has no eyes, no mouth, no ears and yet it's alive, and there's something that I respond to as an actor, as a human being, and as a character in the film and that's what's its really all about. Somehow the fact that any little box or machine I've always been scared of machines anyway, that can move around the floor and stuff. I saw a movie once, "The Glass-Bottomed Boat", it was terrible movie but Rod Taylor and it had a little machine that cleaned up his kitchen, you know, that he pressed a button it came… [new part 2 from Youtube missing transition]

…packing everything there and it scared the shit out of me, man. But I respected it, you know and I thought, that, well, he should talk to it, you know.

[card playing scene].

no more on drones until…

The Making of Silent Running Pt3
8:07
There was a constant problem with the manipulator arms on the drones. They kept not working. The crew tried just about everything imaginable. [The] radio control worked fine in the workshop, but on the ship the metal bulkheads caused interference, and the system wasn't reliable.
Then they tried this sort of pneumatic system. Nothing. Finally they came up with a mechanical system that did just well enough so that the shooting could go on.

Doug T-"for everone of those shots there was just numerable takes… constant re-shooting to get the arm to hit the right position.. constantly had to do cutting, and cutting, and cutting, because you couldn't get the arm to do a complex motion and really do anything in any single one take.

A lot of those close up shots of the manipulator arm working when the arm is cutting away the pant leg on Bruce's leg I'd get in there and work the thing myself because I wanted it to cut a certain way, but Bruce absolutely wouldn't be in the suit.

BD: The only time I was really scared was they have that little whirring cutter on that one drone. but it worked of a pump so that when the air is shot through there [whirring noise]like that and it starts going cutting on my pant leg on my thing there there and if it ever slipped it would've cut my leg right off, you know.

Narr: talks about prosthetic leg.

[Please contact me for corrections to the above transcript]

After quite a bit of research I managed to determine whether or not the grippers were custom built or commercially made. Having a manufacturing plate on the side of the gripper was a give-away, but unfortunately I was unable to read the plate. A bit of good fortune in that whilst researching my next post (on Joshua from "Demon Seed") I recalled a 1981 advert that had a similar gripper. I'm 99% sure the Drone grippers and this gripper are the same, pending variances in the fingers. The grippers are B.A.S.E.(TM) Robotic 2-fingered grippers manufactured by MACK Corporation, Flagstaff, IL, USA. They are still in business and the grippers still feature in their pdf catalogs here and here.

As at August 2012 one of the arms is for sale by The Prop Store. See a set of wonderful photos ideal for the replica maker. Below is only one of them.

Side view with scale.

Art Andrews put up a high-res picture of the Pneumatic Drone arm as seen at the Prop Store booth at San Diego Comic-Con 2012 here. The display card suggests it was the only operational arm used in the film. When one sees the movie this is clearly not the case. At least 2 arms are seen, particularly the surgery and tree planting scenes [see below].

Side-view showing mounting of arm to body.

Other commercial Parts used on the Drones

In another post on the web, we get informed that the headlight is branded "CARELLO" , and the original part number is 06.390.816. The dimensions of the light are 5-1/2" x 2-7/8".

A possible inspiration for the Drone arms – the Case orthotic arm.

Other than home-builts, no production robots were anthropomorphic, certainly not the industrial robots of the time. However, there were a few orthotics and prosthetics being computerised at the time. One of the very first is the Case arm, developed at Case Institute of Technology c1965. It's been difficult to find a good picture of this arm, but in this poor picture here you can see the similarities between it and the Drone arm. Being anthropomorphic, it has a shoulder, elbow, and wrist, offering 5 degrees-of-freedom. The Case arm is also pneumatic, and has padding around the cylinders which has a resemblance to the red-plastic arm covers on the Drones.

VERSATRAN – The other Robot in "Silent Running"

The "billiard's" playing robot is actually an AMF Versatran industrial robot.

Regarding "Silent Running", for a 1972 movie, the Versatran was still considered a state-of-the-art industrial robot.

Two interchangeable end-effectors are shown, a gripper for loading/depositing billiard balls, and a pneumatic "cue" to strike the ball (below). The standard two-fingered Versatran gripper picks up a B.A.S.E.(tm) 3-fingered gripped to deposit the balls. Another small continuity error in that when picking up the B.A.S.E.(tm) gripper, the 2 pneumatic lines are not attached, but then magically appear in the next shot (see above). Also in the above image is the AMF Versatran name/logo, as well as the controller on the left.

The control panel in the background is a real and actual point-to-point Versatran control panel, used to program the various movie sequences. Although portrayed as "thinking for itself" , this robot would have to be choreographed and programmed via the point-to-point controller.

Related Trivia: Doug Trumbull later designed and patented a remote-controlled character called “PAL” which was first used in the Showscan film LET’S GO for the Toshiba Pavilion at Expo ’85 in Tsukuba, Japan. Closer robotic performance was achieved via a high-tech version of Japanese Bunraku puppetry, performed from below by master puppeteer Bruce Schwartz. PAL was the inspiration for Johnny 5 in the movie "Short Circuit" (1986).

The Robot Controller was first used as a prop in the Showscan film LET’S GO (Live Action, 19:00 minutes) a story of a very special friendship that develops between a boy and a robot, for the Toshiba Pavilion at Expo ’85 in Tsukuba, Japan. As stated by Trumbull, "this gizmo may have interesting future applications as a human-computer interface."

Eric Allard was a young effects wizard who made the robot. The robot effects were achieved with a rod puppetry techniques. For those who don't recognise the name, Eric Allard also built Johnny 5 for the movie "Short Circuit." The appearances between the two are remarkably similar.

PAL also did a stint on The Wizard as H.E.N.R.I. VIII with David Rappaport. See fansite here.

According to a August 14, 1981 Hollywood Reporter article, Universal sued Twentieth Century-Fox, claiming that the droid "R2-D2" in Star Wars was an infringement upon the design of drones Huey, Dewey and Louie. Judge Irving Hill of the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles dismissed the case before trial, however, stating that "no one has a monopoly on the use of robots in art," and that the robots in question were not similar. Universal appealed the decision, but the Court of Appeals also dismissed the case.

Interesting to note that 3-CPO was based on Maria the robot from Fritz Lang's 1927 movie Metropolis, and that Don Trumbull worked on "Star Wars" and was also one of the designers of the Drones. There are certainly a lot of similarities, in terms of size, noises instead of voice, and a utilitarian function between the two. Did Don influence the design of R2-D2?

Los Angeles Times – Dec 5, 1977

……….The drones. by the way, proved to be director George Lucas' inspiration for his own stubby robot, R2-D2, a fact that he admitted to [Doug] Trumbull when he approached him about contributing to "Star Wars." Trumbull, however, turned down the assignment because he did not want to repeat himself by returning to another space opera…………..

Found on the internet is the original concept behind "Silent Running". See here[server now gone Aug 2015]

Another unsung trivia nugget unearthed by greg moss.

This week I’d like to reveal a little-known piece of trivia to do with one of my favourite films of all time – Douglas Trumbull’s 1972 SF eco-fable Silent Running.

This film had a massive impact on me as a third grader and no doubt planted the seed for my lifelong appreciation for ecology. The film screened as a midday movie on television and my favourite teacher Mr. Till (who, looking back, could probably be referred to as a bit of a hippy) sat the class down to watch it. I don’t know about the rest of the kids, but for me, it was a seminal experience.

And one which I will be eternally grateful for.

It was only later, in high school, that I learnt the ecological aspects which had such an impact on me weren’t actually present in Trumbull’s original story idea which was primarily about the relationship between the Lowell character and the drones.

In an interview with Trumbull, published in the August 1978 edition of Fantastic Films magazine, Trumbull outlined his original story …

“I wanted to elaborate the story of that relationship [between Lowell and the drones] showing how the machines changed from simply doing their job to their anthropomorphization into real characters. I wanted to show what a dead end it is but also what a wonderful thing it is because of the output of emotion.”

“Around the beginning of 1970 I met [producer] Mike Gruskoff. He said “Come up with a story and maybe I can sell it for you”. I worked out a short story and we made a deal with Universal Pictures”.

“That story involved contact with with an extraterrestrial life force. It was the basic story of some ET’s who are travelling around and who detect this guy who is totally alone, totally isolated. He’d be the guy to make contact with. Here’s a guy out alone. He likes being alone. He likes that job. He’s totally alone in the ship with his little robots whom he has no relationship with at all. He’s getting a little bit old for the space program and he gets the kiss off from the company. They say “You’re being retired with congratulations and everything … and we’re really glad you’ve done such a good job for us.” He says, “But I don’t want to go back. I like it out here alone. I don’t want to go back to Earth. I just want to be left alone.” Here he is with a big old clunky space freighter that is going to be decommissioned anyway. It’s a big piece of shit and he says, “Well, I’ve always sort of wanted to go out exploring.” He decides to steal the ship and he enlists the help of the drones. He reprograms them to help him out and respond to him. They tear out all the communications equipment, throw it out into space, paint the whole ship totally black so no one can see it jet off. He’s constantly threatened by the fact that he could be pursued, that the authorities will be out looking for him. He’s a space pirate, and he’s having the time of his life. He sees a little blip on the radar screen which is the only thing he’s kept functioning. He sees something approaching his ship, and figuring the only safe way is to stay out of sight, he goes into the silent running mode. He turns off all the lights, all the electricity, anything that emits any kind of detectable emission. The ship’s all black and everything. He tries to be absolutely cool and not make a noise and not do anything. No light, all black. And he just waits and this blip gets closer over a period of a week he’s sitting there watching it and he’s sort of cracking up, watching this radar scanner. The air is getting really foul and the oxygen is getting really thin because he hasn’t got the air conditioning on, and finally just before it gets there he passes out. Then there’s this really neat sequence that happens.

It’s all seen from just his room. He’s in the control room. He’s all alone, completely conked out. He’s in that room and it’s dark and you just hear this big clunk of two ships coming together. Then you hear the air lock open and footsteps going down the hallway. You hear things going by. You hear someone turning the knob of the door. It’s all dark. And the camera is just cruising around. By this time with all the things turned off the ship’s in weightless condition. There are books and junk floating through the room and you just sort of see shadows moving. You go back out and the door shuts and the electricity comes back on, and he wakes up a few minutes later with fresh air and everything. The ET’s are gone. He looks around and finds all the places where they pried doors open. He sees all the manifestations that some weird being was on his ship and had saved him by turning the oxygen and stuff back on for him. Finally he realizes that one of the drones is gone. The drones are constantly transmitting television pictures to the three little screens in the control room. He figures that by setting up a little impromtu tracking system he can find out where the drone’s signal is coming from. He sets up his antenna and gets this little, weak signal. He tunes it all in and he’s super adjusting it, increasing the gain and everything, and finally he gets a picture from the drone and it’s a view of our own galaxy receding away from the point of view of another ship that’s got some weirdo shape. He starts talking to the drone. “Find a hatchway. Get inside the ship. Find out what the ship is like.” He’s making first contact with extraterrestrial beings by remote control. The drone hustles around and finally finds a door and gets inside. He’s really getting close. The drone is inside. Then there’s another blip on his radar screen and he realizes it’s the cops. The rest of the film is a big race against time for him to try to make contact before the cops break in. They’re saying “Come out you goddamned space pirate.” He won’t come out. He’s got the door bolted and everything. On the ET ship the drone is getting closer and closer until finally it goes to the right room and opens the door. You see some really weirdo electric man, or something really super duper – he sees the ET and just at that moment, just as he’s finally made that contact, the door to his room just goes Whammo! This cop comes in and wipes out the whole room with a big flame thrower and he’s instantly incinerated. The camera cuts to the drone. It’s just sitting there, not knowing what to do, confronted with these extraterrestrials. The drone just takes his little arm and reaches inside his little body and pulls out a little photograph that he’s carried around with him. It’s a picture in which the hero posed with the three drones, like a little family portrait. The drone holds the photo up to these extraterrestrials and the movie ends like that.”

Greg Moss is a film school graduate with a background in directing music videos and is currently seeking representation as a screenwriter. He likes right-brained people, feeding the cat and watching genre movies.

The ship itself was said to be inspired by the Expo Tower from EXPO '70 in Osaka. The architect was Kiyonori Kikutake (1928-2011). See pic below.